Fmr. TWT Editor to Omni Hotel: Get Off My Lawn!

In a few words, nothing good. But let’s just say it isn’t in the best interest of your yard.

For the past four years, Sam Dealey, former editor of The Washington Times and a communications consultant, has been experiencing an invasion of trucks making deliveries to the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Woodley Park via his front lawn. The trucks back up onto the sidewalk and across his lawn at all hours of the day and night. Delivery men have been so bold as to knock on his door at the ass crack of dawn on weekend mornings and tell him to move his car from his own driveway.

Dealey has approached hotel management in the past. But to no avail, they blow him off. On Sunday he wrote Omni management to request a meeting with the hotel’s general manager. Other neighbors have also been riled by the noise of the trucks rolling in, but they haven’t had to deal with trucks on their lawns.

Most recently the Omni hosted the Value Voters Summit. The hotel has held CPAC and other right of center events. Dealey’s home is also often the setting of right wing soirées. He wonders whether groups such as the Family Research Council might be better suited at a hotel that actually values personal property rights. “I know that these groups respect property rights and general decency, but Omni management routinely doesn’t respect owner rights and routinely behaves in a manner that isn’t neighborly,” Dealey told FishbowlDC. “I never thought I’d be the crank yelling at people to stay off my lawn, but this is effing ridiculous. It may be worth wondering in the future whether groups that share these values wish to do business with a company that apparently does not.”

Signs in Dealey’s neighborhood (as pictured above) indicate that the trucks are not permitted on 28th Street NW. The hotel has two other delivery docks that actually can accommodate large trucks, and which aren’t on residential streets where D.C. law expressly prohibits trucks.

As a tactic to try to stop the trucks from invading his property, Dealey has tried setting up boulders on his lawn. But the delivery men aren’t getting the hint. Instead, they’ve dug up those rocks so their trucks could fit easily on the expanse of Dealey’s lawn. “It could not be a more blatant infringement of property rights,” Dealey continued. “These trucks aren’t even permitted on this road. The signs are clear. I hope to resolve this in a neighborly fashion, but if not, I will protect my private property.”

So far, protecting his private property has required work and cost. “They trenched the lawn and and use my driveway as their own driveway,” Dealey said, explaining that the trucks can’t fit into loading area they have, so they do what they have to do. Dealey just recently made repairs, the aftermath of a giant wheel digging through his lawn.